


Of Mages, Monsters, and Men

by Engineer104



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst, Annette is still a mage though, Blood, F/M, Moderately Graphic Violence, Open Ending, Vampires, if that’s a thing, it’s just blood nothing detailed, maybe i’ll continue this but i make no promises, much good it does her sadly, not like fe fantasy more like...i dunno dracula, vampire felix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:35:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22314934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Engineer104/pseuds/Engineer104
Summary: “When do you eat...or drink?”“When I want,” he said simply. He bared his fangs, and Annette noticed for the first time something...stained them, that his lips were too dark, too wet. “Perhaps you just weren’t paying enough attention.”—Annette doesn’t want to die, but she’s no longer sure that would be such an unkind fate when she meets the monster who saved her.
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 25
Kudos: 75





	Of Mages, Monsters, and Men

**Author's Note:**

> Uh...I have no explanation for this other than it was inspired by one of Bready’s Tweets. Vampire Felix and damsel Annette, anyone?
> 
> If you’re here, please enjoy! If you make it to the end...please don’t hate me

Annette did not appreciate her confines anymore than her captors appreciated her heckling. 

Or, rather, her needling. 

“Let me go!” Her fingers tightened around the Warded steel bars of her cage, knees digging into its hard floor. Short though she was she couldn’t stand, not that she would’ve been able to keep her balance in a rickety wagon lumbering over rough, cracked paving stone. 

“Quiet, witch,” a man with rough, scruffy features and mad eyes hissed. He cracked a whip against the cage. 

Annette gasped when leather stung her fingers, and she pulled her hands back. She slumped, sitting back on her feet while blinking back hot tears. “I’m not a witch,” she protested, not for the first time. “I’m just…”

But she didn’t tell her nasty captors what she was. She doubted they would have much sympathy for a lost, lonely mage rendered helpless by a Warded prison. 

Something about the steel...Annette could barely feel a hint of magic within her. It was worse than when she drove herself to her limit. Then she could feel it within her grasp, near enough to see and perhaps to touch if she just strained, but this…

It felt like being blind, deaf, and mute all at once, like being stripped of her literacy, lost in a black sea without even a current to wash her ashore. The absence of magic quickened her pulse and seized her heart in her chest until all she could feel was her own blinding panic. 

At least until resignation set in. 

“What are you anyway?” Annette found it in herself to wander without much curiosity. She leaned against the bars and glanced over her shoulder at the...well, not the nicest of these villains, but certainly the most polite. 

He stared down at her from his mount, his wide-brimmed hat casting his face in shadow. “Human,” he said, “unlike you and the monsters that hunt in the dark.”

Annette snorted. “I’m as human as you,” she said, but the way he spoke, conflating her with monsters and condemning them all in the same breath, sent a shiver down her spine. 

“You’re a witch,” he said simply, a terse smile on his face. “You lie and mislead as a rule and you broker deals with demons. What could be more monstrous?”

Annette scowled at her bruised fingers and scrubbed at her eyes. “You,” she spat. 

The man barked a wild laugh and conceded, “I never denied a man could be monstrous. If the tales be true, werewolves and ghosts and all those sort...they were once men. And vampires”—his pale eyes fell on her—“they’re the worst of them all.”

Annette refused to lower her gaze despite the fear freezing her - as if she could even fight or flee. “I h-hope a vampire finds us and drains you all dry,” she cursed him. 

(She hoped she kept the fear from her voice.)

The man chuckled, tone dark and full of malice. “Say what you like, witch,” he said, “but it won’t be us he’ll be after.”

He whipped his reins and shot forward, leaving Annette at the center of the convoy, alone in a cage with nothing but her swirling thoughts and nausea and regrets. 

* * *

Night fell as they emerged from the trees at the top of a hill. From her confines Annette could just barely make out a tower rising from a castle that would probably look more impressive if she was in a state to feel awe. The gibbous moon cast an eerie glow over the ancient road leading towards the castle, every blade of grass picked out in white. 

“We’re getting close,” Kostas, the leader of her captors, pronounced. “We’ll camp here for the night and finish the journey come morning.” The gap in his teeth flashed as he smirked. “Tomorrow we kill two monsters and return for two rewards.”

Annette’s fingers wrung her dress, her heart pounding an unsteady beat in her ears. They were going to kill her, that much was obvious, but rather than turning her over to the Church or a judge, they...brought her out here to an abandoned castle far from any settlement. 

Why? And what in the name of the Four Saints was their second monster?

A vampire, her mind supplied. 

_ It won’t be us he’ll be after. _

Annette slapped a hand over her mouth to muffle a gasp. Her heart hammered, faster than a wardrum, more frantic than a squirrel in autumn. 

“No, no,  _ no _ !” Annette buried her face in her hands as a sob escaped her. “I r-refuse to die like that! I refuse—“

“You don’t have much choice, witch.”

Her head jerked up until she found Kostas looming over her cowering in her prison, a nasty, expectant grin curving his mouth. “Y-you—“

“You lost your chance to fight back the instant you danced with demons,” he said. “Now, I don’t care if you sinned or profaned or whatever, but your Crested heart will net us a healthy profit, so I’m sure you can forgive a poor mercenary his earnings.”

“I’m not a witch!” Annette shrieked. She grasped the bars and shook them...much good it would do her. She knelt, hating that her eyes were likely red and that she was growing more hysterical by the heartbeat, but if she could make them understand— “I’m a mage! My magic is my own, not from something else! Don’t you—isn’t it obvious?”

Kostas sneered. “As far as I’m concerned anyone who uses magic is the same.” He spat, a glob of phlegm dribbling down his chin and into his beard. “I don’t care if you’re going to tell me your dear son or poor sick mother is waiting for you at home—“

Annette recoiled, his words striking her like a boot to the gut. 

“—you and that vampire won’t be surviving tonight.” He spun on his heel and faced one of his men. “Make sure she eats well tonight,” he commanded, voice full of glee. When he stomped away. His other men followed, none sparing her a glance unless it was to spit at her cage. 

Annette screamed at them every profanity she knew, every word that earned her a slap to the mouth as a child. A peculiar wave of nostalgia gripped her, and she hugged herself and imagined her mother embraced her instead. 

_ “It’ll be all right, Annette. Father will return, I know it, my love, I know it…” _

* * *

Annette shivered in her thin shawl as a breeze swept through the bars. Except for the whistling of the wind and the creaking of tree branches, silence oppressed the mercenaries’ encampment. She could just barely make out the flickering of a campfire from her cage where a few men sat sentry, but many of the rest had long since retired to the comfort of their bedrolls. 

Meanwhile Annette bore the cold with nothing but her shawl for armor. Her teeth chattered, and her breath misted before her face, and she wondered if she would freeze to death before she met the fate Kostas wished for her. 

(She wasn’t sure which she preferred either.)

Horses knickered in their sleep, a sound Annette might’ve once found comforting. Now she mourned that she couldn’t cast a simple fire spell just to keep herself warm. 

She reached for her magic...and when that block met her instead she bowed her head. 

But she didn’t cry. Annette suspected she’d run out of tears to shed. All she had left was fear, remorse, and resentment. 

She leaned her head backwards against the bars. The steel chilled her scalp through her unwashed hair, but something in its strength steadied her. She wasn’t dead yet, right? So long as she breathed, she could fight. The mercenaries carried weapons, and she knew how to handle an axe, so maybe, just maybe—

Any trace of firelight snuffed out until only the moon and the brightest stars illuminated the camp, and a stillness fell over it. Annette’s breath caught in her throat as she strained to listen. 

A scream rent the air, rising above the sleeping men and their wagons. The thundering of hooves erupted as horses whinnied and reared and galloped past Annette’s wagon. 

Mercenaries jumped from their bedrolls en masse, all hints of sleep falling away as they cried out in alarm and lunged for weapons, shouting about an intruder and stumbling in the dark. Every other gut-wrenching second a man keened, sounding as inhuman as the monsters they hunted, as agonized as their victims. 

Annette cowered in her cage, frozen and helpless as she witnessed the edge of the violence. A new panic took hold in the face if this unseen enemy. 

“No, no, no, damn you!” Kostas bellowed as he burst into view. The bodies of his men, blood glistening on their exposed skin and no breath misting from their lips, lay in heaps around him. He swiped with an axe, his gait unsteady and without grace.

Another man fought him, his skin fair and his gold eyes all but glowing with moonlight. A snarl twisted his features as he danced away from Kostas’ sloppy blows and swiped a sword at him. 

“I was supposed to k-kill  _ you _ !” Kostas shouted, furious but for the tremor of fear in his voice. “You—you  _ monster _ !”

The stranger didn’t dignify him with a response. He moved faster than Kostas, his blows sharper and more precise...almost inhuman. The mercenary shrieked when his blade scraped his side, and he fell to his knees with the man towering over him. 

The tip of his sword, dripping with blood, tilted Kostas’ head up. “Was that the best you could do?” he demanded in a bizarrely mild voice. “Pathetic. You were barely worth my time.”

“This wasn’t—my reward—“

“Damn your reward to hell,” the man sneered. His teeth, pointed and menacing, flashed white. “How many of you hunters do I have to kill before you understand I only want to be left alone?”

The sword pierced Kostas’ throat before he could answer. His eyes bugged in shock, staring up at the vampire, and he emitted a nauseating gurgle. Red slid down his chin from the corner of his mouth, and he crumbled the instant the man pulled his sword from him, dying with nary a whimper. 

All Annette could hear was the sound of her heart and her breathing. 

Then the man’s eyes snapped to Annette. 

She stumbled backwards in her cage, making the sign of the Crest of Seiros, as if that would save her from this predator. Her heart pounded in her throat, pushing her life’s blood through her body, as the man approached her. 

He moved with an elegant sort of grace, like a lion or a wolf...or a predator. The sword sat comfortably in his hand, dripping blood onto the dirt, and he didn’t seem to have broken a sweat. But red - none of it his own, she didn’t doubt - stained his clothes and splattered across his pale face. 

Yet he inspected her with a frown and a curious tilt of his head. 

“Bait?” he guessed. 

Annette forced herself to nod while fruitlessly reaching for her magic. 

He scoffed. “That’s different. Did they think I prefer the blood of young women?” 

Annette barely heard him. If he tried to slaughter her like the rest, she would...she would…

He stuck his sword into the ground and wrapped his hands around the metal bars of the cage. Annette gasped, “N-no, if you—“

He pried them apart with an awful creaking of metal until a gap just wide enough for someone to slip formed. 

Or for her to slip...out. 

The man nodded, as if in satisfaction, and turned to retrieve his sword. His gaze swept over the mercenaries, and he sighed. 

Annette stared at him, anything she could possibly say sticking to her throat. Confusion gripped her more powerfully than fear, but she crawled out of the cage. 

The instant her feet hit solid ground her knees buckled. She fell, the relief of freedom overwhelming, but even that was nothing to the sensation of magic welcoming her again. 

Tears sprung at the corners of her eyes. “Saints…” she mumbled, trembling. “I’m not dead. Why am I not dead?”

The man hadn’t left, but he didn’t dignify her with a response.

“Y-you—you fight with a sword?” Annette wondered...before cursing herself for muttering such an inane question for her last words, because what if he decided he wanted to kill her after all?

The man - the vampire - snorted. He swiped a cloth over the bleeding blade with dizzying speed and barely spared her a glance before replying, “I’m a monster, not a beast.”

“You’re...but you…” Annette’s fingers dug into the soft, blessed soil as she stared at his broad back. “You saved me,” she mumbled.

“I didn’t kill you,” he corrected, as if it was a worthy distinction. 

“Why not?” Annette’s head spun. What a peculiar week she’d had...and rather than it culminating in her death at a vampire’s hands (or fangs) she instead faced him as her rescuer. 

“You didn’t invade my territory of your own free will, so I have no quarrel with you.”

Annette blinked, startled. His words fell so reasonably from his lips, as if spoken by a logician and not a bloodthirsty monster. 

“I’m not sure I understand,” she admitted. “Why are you—aren’t you...hungry? Or thirsty? What’s the right word for it?”

He sheathed his sword in one smooth motion before turning to face her again, eyes glinting. He scowled, but rather than looking menacing he looked...annoyed. “Always,” he said with the air of someone confessing to eating an extra biscuit with dessert, “but that doesn’t mean the scent of blood drives me insane or whatever it is you humans think it does to my kind.”

“I’m a—“ Annette bit her lip, her heart skipping a beat as she realized she’d been about to deny her own humanity. 

Maybe she’d rather be a monster when mercenaries like them claimed to be human. 

She pushed herself to her feet and brushed dust off her dress, as if she wasn’t desperately in need of a bath far away from the scene of a brief, gory battle. “Then when do you eat...or drink?”

“When I want,” he said simply. He bared his fangs, and Annette noticed for the first time something...stained them, that his lips were too dark, too wet. “Perhaps you just weren’t paying enough attention.”

Annette shuddered and willed the metallic stench of blood not to overwhelm her. 

**Author's Note:**

> I’d like to say I’ll continue this because I too would like some sensual blood donation ~~and singing and falling in love~~. but anyway aside from this glaring oversight of mine, please let me know what you thought!
> 
> catch you around ;)


End file.
